The castellated
"Corner Tower" (“Hoektoren”)
projects at the Silo’s south-east corner - a sort of ‘guardian
tower’ facing up Het Ij towards the city (the 1896 Silo was in fact built with
the city’s war-survival in mind). Within
the whole building’s design the tower is an anomaly, a ludicrous little
attempt to break out of rectilinear symmetry, almost a ‘folly’, too puny to
make its semantic point. Its
intended function is obscure, for some time it was used as the site of a
bucket-elevator discharging copra-barges.

CORNER
TOWER IN SITU - EXTERIOR
(pic-extract
9-94 / to W)

The
small "Corner Tower" projects from the SE corner of the Silo's
narrowed end - its
signification as 'guardian' now neutered by the looming New-Silo.

CORNER
TOWER - EXTERIOR
(pic 9-93 / to NW)
Paul's Corner Tower from the raised S-end portion of the Silo's quay.
To the tower's left: built against the Silo's south wall, is the South
drying tower,

.

PAUL
SLICHTER TOWER-HOME (19## -)

Since its squatting the same person has occupied the tower. As a living-site it’s awkward: its
base had been modified and its entry blocked, 5½m up at the level of its first floor its uniquely
shaped interior begins. 11m of vertical space cramped in a awkward plan: a 3¾m
circle ‘dog-legged’ to 3 meters of narrow rectangle excised from the main
building’s corner. This upper part is the main living-place - of all the
Silo's apts (except the New-Silo's most recent and extreme) this is the most
private and alone.

The most ordinary of its three approach routes (the others
are like puzzles) begins from the Silo's quay, up rust-rotted steps to a
concrete terrace, from which, up 2½m of home-made ladders, one can clamber over
the sill of the tower's loading-door directly into the apt's living-room and its alcove kitchen. Much of the round room's space is filled by a huge stair
(dragged from the main Silo and with difficulty hoisted into the tower) rising
to a second floor, newly laid on existing RSJs. Through
a hatchway in this floor one emerges into the white drum
of a tower-room roofed by the unfinished floor of a third room. On these
levels the apt is still evolving: witness the east wall's 'mock-up' of a
platform, part of whose weight maintains the balance of its own precarious
support !: a horizontal box on a vertical brick standing precisely on a thin
corner of narrow steel protruding from the peak of a fat cyclone-cone (modified
as a huge wood-stove).

The room's most resolved feature is its cell-like sleeping alcove which
wonderfully demonstrates the harmony of objects chosen installed and used
without intentional significance or aesthetics - leaving the wit of the drama of
need exposed. Each component of
this ensemble of boxes, hammock, ladder, and
Silo-rosettes behaves distinctly as it is while being used precisely as it
most can be. As usual in these circumstances when need is not blocked by taste and
things are found not preconceived and put where they fit use - a
seemingly innate state of 'holistic-vision' ensues: choices seem directed to
express the maximum quota of meaning harmony and efficacy of usefulness commensurate with the sum of finds: of place and things.

We
will leave the tower-apartment by a stranger route.
Down the
ample stair from the white tower-room into the dense domestic order of the entry
level. This time, turning under the stair, one looks obliquely into the
deep cavity of the tower's base. The descent of two long ladders through this space
increasingly
opens a view into the last of the big transverse chambers of the ground floor:
uniquely windowless (apart from a small lancet at the E-end), seemingly
subterranean and encumbered with junk-objects and remains of Silo
installations. The final exit is a hole cut with a jack-hammer through almost a meter
of brick
beside the base of the tower by its inhabitant in a single day
(his birthday), the size and shape of a hunched body, threaded
with the rubber hose of the apartment's drain and opening into the sensible
porcelain
familiarity of a gents latrine - the
darkness of the weird room beyond
bursting through its
wall with grotesque violence beside the wash-basins.

PAUL TOWER-HOME: EXTERIOR - ENTRY-DOOR
(pic 9-93 / to NW)

PAUL TOWER-HOME L1: VIEW OUT FROM ENTRY-DOOR
(pic 9-94 / to SE)

PAUL TOWER-HOME L1: VIEW IN TOWARD KITCHEN
(pic 9-94 / to NW)

A theme of 'ladders' dominates this
tower-home! Two ladders up to the 'front-door', two down to the inner exit;
here a spare (used as a towel-rail) leans against a stair, and in the L2 room
above is a collapsed ladder that once reached the L3 floor.

[Note that nothing was arranged for
this (or any other) photo -
the complex perfection testifies to its 'unconscious-spontaneity' (try arranging that
blanket!).]

The boxes stand at the door: a sentinel figure speaking books - its stiffness
extends the pillar as the springing arch extends from its hollow head around the
hollow of the sleeping cell; enclosing the drama of the squirming body of the
blanket clambering from its long-suffering net to stare into its flame-shadows
on the wall, rising from the logs of bolsters towards the starry iron crosses of
the silo's reinforcing rods. This astounding 'mystery-play', as perfect as a
framed vision, extends from its cell along the net-like ladder's bend (for Paul a frightening collapse from the upper room as the ladder attempted
to assume the relaxed catenary of the hammock!); includes the feather-duster (: mix the ladder with the violet-handled duster
on a mental palette of shapes, substance, and colours and they will combine
into a form that goes a long way towards ironically mimicking and
'introducing' the central trunk-lid of the proscenium sentry !); and
fades across the configuration's boundaries.

At all degrees of complexity and completeness such marvels of
harmonised vision and meaning are ubiquitous in the Silo.
This 'synaesthesia' of physical and psychic faculties seems innate in acts of realising that are
undistracted by ready-made exemplars.

PAUL
TOWER-HOME L0: VIEW FROM WC EXIT INTO THE LOW SPACE BETWEEN THE SILOS
(pic 9-94 / to SE)

PAUL
TOWER-HOME (L0): WC EXIT INTO THE LOW SPACE BETWEEN THE SILOS - VIEW FROM QUAY
(pic 11-97 / to WWS)
View from the raised quay (from which Paul's tower is normally entered). We have
climbed the stair from the lowest portion of the space between the Silos,
and are looking down [pic: lower-right] at the open door of an
erstwhile Silo workers wc, into which the 'back-door' wall-hole of Paul's
tower exits.